4 How to use LTTng and LTTV in a few lines :
6 This document is made of four parts : The first one explains how to install
7 LTTng and LTTV from Debian and RPM binary packages, the second one explains how
8 to install LTTng and LTTV from sources and the third one describes the steps
9 to follow to trace a system and view it. The fourth and last part explains
10 briefly how to add a new trace point to the kernel.
12 What you will typically want is to read sections 1 and 3 : install LTTng from
13 binary packages and use it. If there are no packages ready for your system, you
14 will have to install from sources (section 2) instead.
16 These operations are made for installing the LTTng 0.5.X tracer on a
17 linux 2.6.X kernel. You will also find instructions for installation of
18 LTTV 0.8.x : the Linux Trace Toolkit Viewer.
20 To see the list of compatibilities between LTTng, ltt-control, LTTV, genevent
21 and lttng-modules, please refer to :
22 http://ltt.polymtl.ca > LTTng+LTTV versions compatibility
26 The following lttng patch is necessary to have the tracing hooks in the kernel.
27 The following ltt-control module controls the tracing.
29 Required programs and librairies are assumed to be automatically installed in an
30 installation with Debian or RPM packages. In the case of an installation from
31 sources, the dependencies are listed.
34 ** Current development status **
37 supported architectures :
38 Intel Pentium (UP/SMP) with TSC
40 C2 Microsystems (variant of MIPS)
43 supported architectures :
50 Author : Mathieu Desnoyers, September 2005
51 Last update : May 13, 2006
54 ***********************************************************
55 ** Section 1 * Installation from Debian or RPM packages **
56 ***********************************************************
58 ** NOTE : RPM and debian packages are only made once a version has been
59 thoroughly tested. If they do not exist at the moment, please install from
60 sources (see section 2 below). To see the list of compatibilities between
61 LTTng, ltt-control, LTTV, genevent and lttng-modules, please refer to
62 http://ltt.polymtl.ca > LTTng+LTTV versions compatibility
65 * Install from RPM packages on Fedora Core 4 :
69 http://ltt.polymtl.ca/packages/fedora/RPMS
73 LTTng kernel and lttng-modules RPM are available for some architectures (i586,
74 i686). Feel free to help fix the spec files to have correct lttng-modules RPM
78 * Install from Deb packages on Debian :
80 You can use the ltt.polymtl.ca apt source to get LTTV for Debian :
82 Add the following two sources to your /etc/apt/sources.list :
84 deb http://ltt.polymtl.ca/packages/debian experimental main
85 deb-src http://ltt.polymtl.ca/packages/debian experimental main
88 * Install from precompiled binary packages (LTTV compiled only for i386, and
89 LTTng only for i686 smp), perform the following :
93 apt-get install lttv lttv-doc
94 apt-get install kernel-image-2.6.12-rc4-mm2-lttng-0.4.2
95 apt-get install lttng-modules-modules-2.6.12-rc4-mm2-lttng-0.4.2
96 * note : the packages are signed by myself. I am not considered a trusted
97 Debian source yet, so warnings are normal.
99 Then, follow the section "Editing the system wide configuration" in section 2.
101 * Create custom LTTV Debian packages
103 Binary packages are only available for i386. If you want to create your own LTTV
104 packages for other platforms, do :
110 dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot
112 You should then have your LTTV .deb files created for your architecture.
114 * Create custom LTTng packages
116 For building LTTng Debian packages :
119 apt-get install kernel-source-2.6.12-rc4-mm2-lttng-0.4.2
121 bzip2 -cd kernel-source-2.6.12-rc4-mm2-lttng-0.4.2.tar.bz2 | tar xvof -
122 cd kernel-source-2.6.12-rc4-mm2-lttng-0.4.2
123 make menuconfig (or xconfig or config) (customize your configuration)
124 make-kpkg kernel_image
126 You will then see your freshly created .deb in /usr/src. Install it with
127 dpkg -i /usr/src/(image-name).deb
129 You will also need to create a package for the lttng-modules :
133 apt-get source lttng-modules
134 cd kernel-source-2.6.12-rc4-mm2-lttng-0.4.2
135 make-kpkg --added_modules /usr/src/lttng-modules-0.3 modules_image
137 You will then see your freshly created .deb in /usr/src. Install it with
138 dpkg -i /usr/src/lttng-modules-modules-(your version).deb
141 Then, follow the section "Editing the system wide configuration" in section 2.
144 ***********************************************************
145 ** Section 2 * Installation from sources **
146 ***********************************************************
150 Tools needed to follow the package download steps :
157 You have to install the standard development librairies and programs necessary
158 to compile a kernel :
160 (from Documentation/Changes in the Linux kernel tree)
161 o Gnu C 2.95.3 # gcc --version
162 o Gnu make 3.79.1 # make --version
163 o binutils 2.12 # ld -v
164 o util-linux 2.10o # fdformat --version
165 o module-init-tools 0.9.10 # depmod -V
167 You might also want to have libncurses5 to have the text mode kernel
168 configuration menu, but there are alternatives.
170 Prerequisites for LTTV 0.x.x installation are :
173 gtk 2.4 or better development libraries
174 (Debian : libgtk2.0, libgtk2.0-dev)
175 (Fedora : gtk2, gtk2-devel)
176 note : For Fedora users : this might require at least core 3 from Fedora,
177 or you might have to compile your own GTK2 library.
178 glib 2.4 or better development libraries
179 (Debian : libglib2.0-0, libglib2.0-dev)
180 (Fedora : glib2, glib2-devel)
181 libpopt development libraries
182 (Debian : libpopt0, libpopt-dev)
184 libpango development libraries
185 (Debian : libpango1.0, libpango1.0-dev)
186 (Fedora : pango, pango-devel)
187 libc6 development librairies
188 (Debian : libc6, libc6-dev)
189 (Fedora : glibc, glibc)
192 * Getting the LTTng packages
197 (see http://ltt.polymtl.ca/lttng for package listing)
198 wget http://ltt.polymtl.ca/lttng/patch-2.6.16-lttng-0.x.xx.tar.bz2
199 bzip2 -cd patch-2.6.16-lttng-0.x.xx.tar.bz2 | tar xvof -
202 * Getting LTTng kernel sources
206 wget http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/testing/linux-2.6.16.tar.bz2
207 bzip2 -cd linux-2.6.16.tar.bz2 | tar xvof -
209 cat /usr/src/lttng/patch-2.6.16-lttng-0.x.xx* | patch -p1
211 mv linux-2.6.16 linux-2.6.16-lttng-0.x.xx
214 * Installing a LTTng kernel
217 cd /usr/src/linux-2.6.16-lttng-0.x.xx
218 make menuconfig (or make xconfig or make config)
219 Select the < Help > button if you are not familiar with kernel
221 Items preceded by [*] means they has to be built into the kernel.
222 Items preceded by [M] means they has to be built as modules.
223 Items preceded by [ ] means they should be removed.
224 go to the "Instrumentation Support" section
225 Select the following options :
226 [*] Linux Trace Toolkit Instrumentation Support
227 <M> or <*> Linux Trace Toolkit Tracer
228 It makes no difference for the rest of the procedure whether the Tracer
229 is compiled built-in or as a module.
231 [*] Align Linux Trace Toolkit Traces
232 [*] Allow tracing from userspace
233 your choice (see < Help >) :
234 [ ] Activate Linux Trace Toolkit Heartbeat Timer
235 You may or may not activate instrumentation per facility. They are all
236 selected for logging by default. It can be used as a compile time filter to
237 enable/disable logging of events. It is useful to discard events with a
238 minimal impact on the system and especially useful for now, as the dynamic
239 filter has not been implemented yet.
249 Select the Linux 2.6.16-lttng-0.x.xx kernel in your boot loader.
252 * Editing the system wide configuration
254 You must activate relayfs and specify a mount point. This is typically done in
255 fstab such that it happens at boot time.
257 If you have never used RelayFS before, these operation would do this for you :
260 cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.lttng.bkp
261 echo "relayfs /mnt/relayfs relayfs rw 0 0" >> /etc/fstab
263 then, rebooting or issuing the following command will activate relayfs :
267 You need to load the ltt-control module to be able to control tracing from user
268 space. This is done by issuing the command :
272 If you want to have complete information about the kernel state (including all
273 the process names), you need to load the ltt-statedump module. This is done by
274 issuing the command :
276 modprobe ltt-statedump
278 You can automate at boot time loading the ltt-control module by :
280 echo ltt-control >> /etc/modules
281 echo ltt-statedump >> /etc/modules
284 * Getting and installing the ltt-control package (on the traced machine)
285 (note : the ltt-control package contains lttd and lttctl. Although it has the
286 same name as the ltt-control kernel module, they are *not* the same thing.)
289 wget http://ltt.polymtl.ca/lttng/ltt-control-0.x-xxxx2006.tar.gz
290 gzip -cd ltt-control-0.x-xxxx2006.tar.gz | tar xvof -
291 cd ltt-control-0.x-xxxx2006
292 (refer to README to see the development libraries that must be installed on you
299 * Getting and installing the LTTV package (on the visualisation machine, same or
300 different from the visualisation machine)
304 wget http://ltt.polymtl.ca/packages/LinuxTraceToolkitViewer-0.x.xx-xxxx2006.tar.gz
305 gzip -cd LinuxTraceToolkitViewer-0.x.xx-xxxx2006.tar.gz | tar xvof -
306 cd LinuxTraceToolkitViewer-0.x.xx-xxxx2006
307 (refer to README to see the development libraries that must be installed on you
316 ***********************************************************
317 ** Section 3 * Using LTTng and LTTV **
318 ***********************************************************
320 * Use graphical LTTV to control tracing and analyse traces
322 lttv-gui (or /usr/local/bin/lttv-gui)
323 - Spot the "Tracing Control" icon : click on it
324 (it's a traffic light icon)
325 - enter the root password
329 * You should now see a trace
331 * Use text mode LTTng to control tracing
333 The tracing can be controlled from a terminal by using the lttctl command (as
338 lttctl -n trace -d -l /mnt/relayfs/ltt -t /tmp/trace
340 Stop tracing and destroy trace channels :
344 see lttctl --help for details.
349 Fell free to look in /usr/local/lib/lttv/plugins to see all the text and
350 graphical plugins available.
352 For example, a simple trace dump in text format is available with :
354 lttv -m textDump -t /tmp/trace
356 see lttv -m textDump --help for detailed command line options of textDump.
361 ***********************************************************
362 ** Section 4 * Adding new instrumentations with genevent **
363 ***********************************************************
365 * Getting and installing genevent
369 wget http://ltt.polymtl.ca/packages/genevent-0.xx.tar.gz
370 gzip -cd genevent-0.xx.tar.gz | tar xvof -
376 * Add new events to the kernel with genevent
379 cd /usr/local/share/LinuxTraceToolkitViewer/facilities
380 cp process.xml yourfacility.xml
381 * edit yourfacility.xml to fit your needs.
383 /usr/local/bin/genevent /usr/local/share/LinuxTraceToolkitViewer/facilities/yourfacility.xml
384 cp ltt-facility-yourfacility.h ltt-facility-id-yourfacility.h \
385 /usr/src/linux-2.6.16-lttng-0.x.xx8/include/linux/ltt
386 cp ltt-facility-loader-yourfacility.c ltt-facility-loader-yourfacility.h \
387 /usr/src/linux-2.6.16-lttng-0.x.xx/ltt
388 * edit the kernel file you want to instrument
389 - Add #include <linux/ltt/ltt-facility-yourfacility.h> at the beginning
391 - Add a call to the tracing functions. See their names and parameters in
392 /usr/src/linux-2.6.16-lttng-0.x.xx/include/linux/ltt/ltt-facility-yourfacility.h